


I See A Mirror

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, twinganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 09:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: follow up to my Two Minutes fic.  Ryou in spaaaaace.  Otherwise known as 'how far would you go for your mirror half'?  Also know as: 'so - exactly what do you think would happen to someone suddenly in the intergalactic universe that looked exactly like the legendary Champion?'





	1. Chapter 1

“Shiro, could you come to the bridge please?”

The princess’ voice over the com and Shiro looked up from where he was working on training the rest of the team on hand-to-hand.  Lance took a pot shot at him with an elbow and Shiro, smiling a little, caught it in his palm without turning his head to look, peripheral vision easily catching the telegraphed move.

“Good job, Lance.  Always take the opening when you see it.”  He straightened and the rest of the team, looking relieved, and, in Hunk’s case, a little less scared, straightened as well.  “Be right there, princess.  All right team, take five. Then try out your new move on each other.  _Gently_.”

“That was her ‘uh oh’ tone,” Pidge observed, moving over to get her glasses.  Shiro didn’t comment on it because - well, Pidge was right.  Allura’s voice somehow got stiffer and even more enunciated and ‘proper’ when she was concerned about something.

“Uh oh voice?” Lance was suddenly interested - and giving Shiro the woolly eyeball.  Starting to grin.  “You’re in trouble,” he singsonged.  Shiro ran a towel over the back of his neck and debated getting back into his uniform.  He didn’t feel right coming into a situation, especially on the bridge and with Allura no less, out of uniform but he’d just get it dirty in his current state if he did and he didn’t think that tone of voice offered time for a shower and making himself presentable.   He accepted the water packet Hunk passed him with a smile and shook his head.

“Just keep up with your training.  I’ll be back to check on you once I get the chance.”

Lance gave him a salute - which he assumed meant the team was going to rest for at least ten minutes instead of five once he was out the door but he wasn’t going to call them on it.  They had been working hard.  Keith however fell into step next to him.  Shiro arched an eyebrow at him but Keith just scowled and kept pace with him for the door.  Keith had always stuck close but since the run in with Haggar and the crash landing on the planet with the space lizards, there was a definite shift in the way he - it wasn’t hovering but it certainly had a more protective feel to it.  Shiro appreciated it - and knew he was going to have to get it to stop.  Keith had other things he needed to concentrate on.  Just - not yet.  Whatever Allura wanted, Shiro didn’t have a problem with Keith hearing it too.  If anything happened to him, he wanted Keith to lead and that started with being part of making plans.

“What?  How come Keith gets to go?  Allura didn’t use her ‘uh oh’ voice on him!”

Which, Shiro suspected meant Lance was looking for a way out of more training but he shrugged.  It wasn’t as if they were keeping secrets about anything.

“Well, come on.”

Pidge and Hunk took one look at each other and scrambled to their feet as well, falling into quick step behind a trotting Lance.

Looked like Allura was getting the whole crew after all.

Not that she seemed particularly bothered by it, beyond a raised set of thin eyebrows when they all walked onto the bridge shortly after her call.  The main vid screen was up, trailing alien lettering across it like a marque sign.  A vicious looking face, something that looked like a bad mug shot, flared to life and somewhere in the back of Shiro’s mind, something went very cold.  His stomach rolled, nauseated without reason, and the next picture that flashed by was of the same alien, armed with dual knives the size of bastard swords in the middle of a fight, a frozen second of time in a death struggle that Shiro recognized the way a sick fever that had settled into the bones was recognizable each time it surfaced.  He averted his eyes from the screen and forced all his concentration on the princess.  Who was watching him with the tight lines of worry about her eyes.

“What’s going on?”  His voice at least stayed steady but he saw the way the other paladin’s craned their necks to see what was still flashing across the screen and he knew they were putting the math together and realizing what that was - and what it meant to him.  He refused to look at them.

“I’m sorry, Shiro,” still clipped but softer and he both appreciated that and registered that anything that started off with an apology was probably going to be uncomfortable, at the least, for him.  He unconsciously squared his already set shoulders and met her eyes.  He could do this.  He was the Black Paladin.  And he was the squad leader.  Everything else came second place to that.  Whatever Allura saw she took it as her sign to continue.

“As you know, we have a constant monitor running on all the news sources we can access.  Both for any hints that will help us with assigning new targets and to keep an ear out for any news involving Voltron.  We programed in quite a few words that will immediately flag if they come up.”  She gave him another look, part apologetic, part ‘don’t ask me to apologize it was necessary’.  “One of those words is Champion.”

The sick feeling intensified, curling rotten in his gut, coiling up the back of his spine and wrapping around the base of it.  The fever dream feeling moved through the back of his brain, always there, just a little less dormant now.  He kept his jaw looked and his eyes straight ahead on her and he didn’t miss the way Keith stepped to his side and just a little behind him or the way the rest of the team went silent.  Coran interrupted.

“As you know, we run hundreds of words through the system every tic, sorting through the news and trying to find useful tips.  Most of its rubbish of course.  That and a few catchy song lyrics really.”  The brief distraction lost to his usual enthusiasm.  “But every now and then we get a useful hit!  Loose lips ground star ships and all that.”

“Right,” Allura took over again.  “We got a pip just a few moments ago.  It appears one of the more affluent planets is hosting a Gladiator event.”  Her tone made her opinion obvious as only Allura could.  Her eyes met his and her voice went gentler.  Almost apologetic again.  “Shiro, I thought you should see this.”

His common sense was screaming at him not to look.  That he already knew what the fighter scrolls looked like, that it would cause a flashback, that his team didn’t need to see him fall apart again - but if the princess thought it was important than he trusted her judgement.  Eyes narrowing a little, bracing himself, he turned to look at the screen.  

“They’re hailing it as quite the event.”  She paused, just for a second.  “And the core game is for the return of the Champion to the fight ring.”

The picture flashed up on the screen.  Dark close cut hair except for the longer fringe in the front, stormy grey eyes, a lean square face.  Shiro went completely still.  The universe stopped, in that split second, just before it crashed like broken glass into sand and something, small and foolish, thought - if he would just not move, maybe the rest of the world wouldn’t either and this wouldn’t be real.  Lance made a surprised noise.  And, surprisingly, it was Hunk that spoke, voice cracking a little, in surprise and hurt.

“Instructor Ryou?”

The ‘mug shot’ was a little out of focus and the man in it looked a bit worse for the wear, bruised and hollow cheeked, lip split.  But it was the eyes that tore the heart right out of Shiro.  The wide, scared, lost looking, unprepared eyes.

“Who?” Lance wanted to know as Pidge made a small squeaking noise and said:

“I didn’t realize they were identical.”

The next still was of the same man, the man that looked so much like a younger Shiro from only a year ago, teeth bared, pure fury and anger across his face, features splashed with something dark and teeth bared in a snarl as he lunged at something much bigger than him bare handed.

“It’s his brother.  Shiro’s twin brother.”  Keith was explaining but it was all buzzing in Shiro’s ears, somewhere distant and hollow.  He could taste metal in his mouth, tinny and foreign.

“He’s supposed to be on Earth though,” Keith’s voice was still going.  “He shouldn’t be out here.”

_Safe on Earth._

_Anywhere but here._

“Suit up, team.”  Shiro’s voice was flat and deathly calm.  He was already heading for his compartment, stride intent and irrevocable.  “We’ve got a fight to stop.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryou had thought the alien ship would bring him to his brother's dead body. Turns out - it just might have brought him to his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> want more after this chapter? [head over to cocopopps1995 for a continuation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11860662)

Ryou was scared.

He’d never been so scared in all his life, not even close.

And when Ryou got scared, he got _angry_.

In a way, the fact that all of this was so surreal helped. Everything had taken on a vague dreamlike quality, no, nightmare, and it helped him compartmentalize.  He’d never been as good at that before as his twin had been but - he’d watched the best do it and he had motivation to learn fast.  

Outside the crowd roared, like a wave crashing against rocks, sound receding a little but never going away entirely and bound to rise again.  Ryou hated that sound, and, at the moment, he hated every single throat it came out of, terror and frustration needed an outlet that was safe for him to feel.  Hate he could use, hate gave him singular focus - and he could discard hate when it didn’t suit him anymore.  Terror and frustration though - those were traps and he knew if he let himself realize they were there, they’d consume him.  So anger and hate it was and his hands, already battered and raw knuckled, clenched at his sides.

How had it come to this?

He certainly hadn’t prepared for it when he’d hijacked the alien space ship and punched his way out of Earth’s atmosphere, course charted for Kerberos.  For his dead brother and their lost Magpie.

He hadn’t expected to make it.

Of course not.  It was five months out and five months back at the fastest human speed they knew.  There had been no way, even with Lani’s help, that he could steal enough food and water to last that long.  He hadn’t even been able to lay his hands on enough for the trip out, much less one back.  Barring a miracle, he was going to starve or die of dehydration before he even got near his brother’s moon tomb and that was if nothing else went wrong - if the hull hadn’t become unsound and developed a leak, the engine and its strange crystal drive had somehow not run to the end of their fuel by then, if the ship didn’t just shoot straight past Kerberos and keep going, on its long, silent, dead journey onward to the next star system human lifetime after lifetime away from them.  Ryou knew his chances of getting there, much less finding his brother’s body, much less bringing it back, were not just lean, they were, scientifically, impossible.  He’d gone anyway.  He had to.  Smart or not, possible or not, if the ship had come to Ryou’s hands, he’d known he was going to have to take it and try.  He was taking their only remaining child from his parents - but he knew they hadn’t really had him anymore anyway.  Part of him had been lost with his brother and it would never come back on its own.

What he hadn’t expected, head still under one of the ship’s panels, still trying to figure things out once he’d sailed past the familiar sight of the moon, lit up with its slowly growing colonies, was the proximity alarm he’d hoped he’d set for his arrival at Kerberos to go off in less than a matter of hours.  It should have occurred to him that an alien vessel could go faster than a human one, if they were advanced enough to get between stars, but somehow, mind bent on enduring as long as he could on limited food, water, and possibly even oxygen, he just hadn't thought, too distracted by wanting to stick his head in alien tech while he still had the strength and mental ability for it, to pay attention to his surroundings and the possibilities, locked in a zone with the ship and too narrowed by it to notice or think of, anything else.  Taka had warned him often enough that was dangerous but how dangerous could forgetting to eat or missing a class be when you were on a mental trail with a machine’s heart?

More dangerous when you did it in cold space apparently.

He’d narrowly missed cracking his head on the dash when the alarm had gone off, pulled his head up just enough to see the screen and wonder if the course he’d plotted to take him close to one of the larger planets and a gravity well he could use, vague memories of Taka’s own route in mind. The sight of dead Kerberos had taken him a moment to understand - and then his eyes had nearly popped out of his head as he’d scrambled for the pilot’s chair and started to work what of the controls he’d figured out in the few hours he’d had.  He wasn’t a pilot like Ryou but he’d logged hours in simulators often enough, testing what he was creating.  Vaguely recalling, with a kind of detached dead man’s amusement, the rumors he’d heard that they’d switched one of the simulators to a Kerberos rescue mission for the cadets, someone’s guilt and wishful thinking trying to pretend there was a fix to the unfixable.  Ryou wasn’t going to pretend.  It had been over a year since Magpie went silent.  The Kerberos mission didn’t have enough oxygen, water or food for that.  He was here to find a body - _bodies_ because Colleen and her young daughter deserved that too.  And to maybe find the clues as to who - and why - someone had killed a scientific team in their own solar system’s backyard and then - he realized - never come any further, never done anything to the science station around Io or the struggling colonies on the moon or even vented their garbage tanks near Earth.  Not a sound, not a hint of anything, not in the mad scramble after Magpie’s sudden silence, not in the growing acceptance and sadness after.  Not a hint, when every Earth created sensor had been turned this direction in the aftermath.  Just - kill three people, turn around and go home.

It didn’t make any sense.

It had made more sense when he’d thought it was a malfunction with Magpie.

But - it couldn’t be unrelated, the crashed alien ship.  Not a year after the disappearance.  Except - belated - Ryou was starting to realize that it just might.  Coincidences happened.  Except - he’d been so sure this would lead him to Taka, and it was, but he’d somehow assumed that it somehow _involved_ Taka’s disappearance in the first place and - and it was really too late to be figuring this out now.  Ryou scratched at his chin and the old, almost invisible bike accident scar from childhood there and then shook his head.  Didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter.  He had to prioritize and the _why_ wasn’t as important right now as the _how_.  How to maneuver this ship down, how to find lost Magpie and his brother’s body, how to get them onboard when he had no idea about how to pressurize or unpressurize this thing and how to get them all back to Earth.  He’d deal with his court martial and jail time after that.  At least his parents and grandmother would finally have a body.   Hiroshima’s mound and its ’ _no one came to get them’_ didn’t belong on repeat for his family.

He also wasn’t stupid.  He was the only human to fly this thing and the one with the most understanding of it.  He’d get punishment - but he might find himself in his own engineering unit with a new ship to study over jail time once he got home.

As long as, either way, they let him attend the funeral.

The thought focused him and, murmuring a mix of endearments, encouragement and promises to it, he slowly worked the ship into orbit and started a rudimentary scan as far as he’d managed to figure out its sensors so far.

Which was when the scavenger ship showed up.

And things went straight to hell.

And now he was here.  On some fucked up, god forsaken alien world so far from home he knew he wouldn’t even recognize the stars if he did get a chance to peek at them, with a roaring crowd outside the double doors in front of him, adrenaline starting to course through him, anger starting to build, need to get this started rising so that he could release some of the awful energy inside of him by either killing something or dying.

By now he knew the way these things went.  He’d done them often enough.

‘Champion’ they called him.  Replacing the last Champion as far as he could tell. Some kind of passed down title he’d inherited the second the scavengers had laid eyes on him.  They’d told him he was lucky they’d found him instead of the Galra.  He’d picked up small things about this huge universe since than but he still wasn’t sure about that assessment of theirs.  He couldn’t imagine much worse a fate than gladiatorial matches until you got yourself painfully slaughtered.

The double doors swung open and Ryou walked out of them.  If he didn’t, they’d just come and get him and his body didn’t need the extra punishment when they’d make him fight afterward all the same.  He’d learned that lesson fast.  The sword was waiting for him and Ryou picked it up as the crowd roared again, on their multiple feet now, bastards each and every one, cheering over death because at least it was happening to other people and not them.  Taka would have had a field day with commentary given his love of history.  Ryou just found the weak points in the arena and imagined what he’d do to bring them all down to his level if he had some C4 on him.

The door on the other side of the arena opened then and his opponent came lumbering out and Ryou wondered, with no small exasperation, if he really was the smallest being alive in the entire galaxy or if they just refused to find anyone even close to his size for these things.

He’d already learned the hard way that big didn’t mean slow and he had the scars to remind him if he was ever tempted to forget.

Still, they’d given him someone fleshy again and he was starting to suspect it was because the sight of him turning someone into pulp was a crowd pleaser.  One part of him was disgusted by that, and by the fact it was now a trade mark of his apparently - and the other part thought a quiet, cold, viscous 'good’.  Because his rage and frustration had to come out somewhere or it would eat him alive inside and as much as he was horrified to find that was a part of him, frightened by where it had come from, another part of him was just glad to let it out instead of having it festering inside.  He’d never raised a hand to anything before, living or inanimate, except in carefully controlled spars that had always been more about skill than actual damage - and now he was killing creatures with his bare hands.

What did that say about him?

What did that _make_ him?

The Arena wasn’t the time for doubt or introversion though and so he tapped into that trapped helpless anger to swallow the fear and the self-doubt and let it swell up through him.  His opponent charged forward with a roar - and Ryou dropped low and charged to meet him.  Time to die.  Time for someone to die.  And Ryou didn’t care which one of them it was so long as it ended things.

* * *

Ryou was busy getting his ass handed to him when he heard the roar.

Granted, the ass handing was currently a two way street and his opponent was looking just as bad if not worse than he was.  They’d picked a brawler to pit against him this time and both of them had lost their weapons and gone hand to - paw - in very short order, sticking with what they knew.  Ryou couldn’t feel the ribs on his left side, couldn’t see out of the eye on the same side, had to keep spitting to clear his mouth of blood and thought he might, possibly, have breaks in his foot, except his leg was tingling pins and needles at him from the knee down on that side.  His opponent though was actively avoiding using his dominant hand any more and protecting his leg on that side and Ryou knew, if he just held out, he’d get his opening there.  The crowd, sensing it, was roaring.  The blood rushing through his ears was roaring.  Inwardly, his chest was roaring, hating doing this but needing the release and knowing the alternative was death.  And the final roar, so load it cracked the air, still took him a second or two to register, feeling it rattle and thrum through his bones, his belly, his empty chest, long before his mind registered that his ears had heard it first and, for some reason, Ryou’s first thought was that there was an earthquake, the vibrations that strong through his own body.

Except that then the ground really did shake as something monumental landed hard, slapping down landing gear far too close to Ryou for comfort and Ryou rolled, despite the pain, curling protective and getting himself out of what felt like a collapsing roof fall even though there was no roof on the Arena.  He came up fast though, geared to run.  Not a single surprise so far out here had been a good thing and he was hardly going to expect that to change now.  Until, just for a moment, blindsided - he blinked.

Was that… a giant…cat?

That -

was a giant cat.

A _cat_.

Not exactly aerodynamic but - sure.  Why the hell not?  Why wouldn’t space have giant flying cat ships?

The screaming finally made it past the thunder in his ears and he realized that the Arena was in chaos, that there were more metal cats - and that no one was paying attention to him.

He had one second of pure stillness - and then he bolted for a nearby pile of rubble he was pretty sure he could scale to get into the seats.  In this crowd, if he moved fast, there was a good chance he could get out of here before anyone got organized.  And then -

oh fuck

_who knew._

But it wouldn’t be gladiatorial fighting, that was for sure.

Except a giant metal paw slapped down right in front of him, close enough that the pressure of its landing blasted the hair back from his forehead and a hollow metal voice that vibrated through the air said:

“Ryou!  Get in the lion!”

Which was - completely insane and not at all likely.  Ryou rested one hand on the frozen metal that still carried the cold of space on it and vaulted the giant paw, headed straight for the rubble

Except he didn’t.

He meant to.

He told his body to.

His mind was already past the rubble and working out exit strategy for the bleachers.

And his feet were headed the other way, taking him straight into the giant lion’s suddenly open mouth.

Because, apparently, he’d finally lost control of his own body and probably his mind too.

He scrambled over the lip of the mouth, past teeth - who put _teeth_ on a space ship? - that were easily as big as he was - and the jaws snapped shut on him, sealing him into darkness and the following almost immediate lurch had him tumbling into his knees, cracking them hard against metal, hands flailing and barely catching the rest of his body. The cat ship accelerated, he could feel the sheer pressure of it in his chest and, for just a second, he felt nothing but complete and pure admiration that something so bulky looking could accelerate so smoothly.  Before his eyes came up, while he was leaned over and still panting, and the fear came back like a huge weight dropping across his chest.

No one knew his name.

_Who knew his name out here?_

He couldn’t even remembered the last time he’d tried to tell someone what it was or use it to identify himself -

A hatch slid open and he didn’t even have to be told, scrambling out of the increasingly hot mouth of the cat and pulling himself through into something cool and metal and bright.  The thought that Magpie with a bit of the lost alien ship’s tech would look the same surprised its way through his mind and a part of him that had been dormant since his capture flared, relieved and almost painfully vividly, to life.  And then he saw the figure seated at the control chair, saw black and white armor and his heart clenched up so hard in his chest for no reason that he thought, maybe, he was finally having a heart attack, the pain was so intense.  His eyes blurred and he didn’t understand why, when he swiped his gorey sleeve across them, it came away wet with tears.  And then there was only space through the viewscreens and the white armor was choking out words like they couldn’t breathe, pushing out of their seat and damn, Ryou was still the smallest being in the entire galaxy.   Except for some reason it didn’t matter and that sleek helmet came off but even before it hit the floor

Ryou knew.

His eyes filled up again and then overflowed and the sound he made was raw and animal and hurt and he was launching himself, reaching, desperate, even as the other figure moved for him at the same time.

Ryou didn’t remember the last time he’d cried.  Childhood.  When he still could cry and empty his entire heart into it.

He cried that way now.

Clinging tight, wrapped safe, in his brother’s arms.


End file.
